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FIRST LOOK: Korg monotron

Korg's monotron has been on most hi-tech musicians' must-have list from the moment it made its debut at the Frankfurt Musikmesse back in March.

In short, it's a £50, pocket-sized synth that sports an oscillator, filter and LFO, with an aux input on the back enabling you to treat external sound sources with the filter. Sounds are played via the ribbon keyboard, and you can hear the results of your playing through the built-in speaker or headphone output.

Korg was good enough to send us a monotron last week: check out the video above to see us playing the synth standalone and then using it to process the iPhone's TonePad instrument, a guitar and keyboard.

As you'll discover, the monotron is like a Stylophone on steroids - and more besides.